Storyboard18 at Cannes Lions: Khurrum Malik of Integral Ad Science shares views on CTV, AI, and ad fraud

At the ongoing Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Storyboard18’s editor Delshad Irani caught up with Khurrum Malik of Integral Ad Science. Integral Ad Science is a global media measurement and optimisation platform, and Malik is the chief marketing officer of the company. Here are the highlights from the interview.

According to Malik, today marketers are not just asking questions about brand safety within the open web but also safety on social feeds. He explains as most brands are hyperactive on social media, user-generated content and the consumption of that kind of content have significantly gone up. As a result, uncertainty is also going up. That's the reason why, advertisers have started taking brand safety on social and audio as their priority.

Malik also observes while marketers are always under pressure to generate return on investments (RoI), today even creative agencies are under pressure to generate creative RoI. That's a new kind of conversation at global events like Cannes Lions.

Companies like Integral Ad Science are looking to do a frame-by-frame analysis of brand videos. Advertisers want the ability to scale with confidence not only on social but also on Connected TV (CTV). Malik says, “We have the ability to understand what’s the sentiment of the video and use AI (artificial intelligence) to determine if the video is brand safe. If you just looked at keywords, you might sense penalty shootout.”

Malik shares deeper insights into the changing mindset of marketers. He reveals that advertisers want to know where their brand is landing from a brand safety perspective. If there is a category like politics, they decide to avoid it. Some brand safety tools allow advertisers to go much deeper. “If you want to avoid politics in a certain region, and certain topics, providing people with more brand safety scalpel instead of a sledgehammer is more important,” Malik says.

Malik feels that in this race for AI supremacy, from an advertiser’s perspective, AI is going to be used as a tool to generate more creative ideas and is going to be a tool to assess creative ideas and performance. “AI is a tool that can enhance. It is a tool advertisers want to use to protect brands,” he says.

According to Malik’s observations, advertisers in India are concerned about ad fraud. Considering that India is rich with multiple cultures and languages, Malik expects to see more AI and ML (machine learning) based brand safety tools.

Watch the full interview here.

(Compiled by Indrani Bose)